Law

Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue's $51 million settlement with the Office of Thrift Supervision on claims the firm helped Charles Keating perpetrate the fraud leading to the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan Assn will make lawyers more concerned about client behavior in the future. Lawyers who represent clients before regulators, in particular, will feel greater pressure to disclose client improprieties. The Jones, Day settlement denies wrongdoing by the firm while at the same time absolving it of any present or future liability to the Resolution Trust Corp regarding the Lincoln debacle.

The American Bar Association on June 27 announced an agreement with the Justice Dept settling charges by the latter that it abused its powers as a law-school accrediting agency. The accusations, similar to those raised by the Massachusetts School of Law in Nov 1993, accuse the ABA of using its accrediting process to artificially inflate law teachers' salaries and require other costly expenditures not directly related to legal education. The ABA denied the charges' validity, and said it had already made the changes requested.

Federal judge Royce C. Lamberth in a ruling issued on Apr 15, 1992 ended a race discrimination suit filed by former employees against ABC and its parent company, Capital Cities Inc, with a default judgment, accusing both ABC and its law firm, Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, of trying to suppress important information during the discovery phase. Wilmer, Cutler plans to submit a detailed rebuttal to the court in May.